Deal to buy Russian copters canceled

Thursday

Nov 14, 2013 at 12:01 AMNov 14, 2013 at 11:37 AM

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon no longer will buy Russian helicopters for the Afghan Air Force from Rosoboronexport, a state-owned arms exporter that also sells weapons to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, defense officials and a leading Senate opponent of such deals said yesterday.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon no longer will buy Russian helicopters for the Afghan Air Force from Rosoboronexport, a state-owned arms exporter that also sells weapons to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, defense officials and a leading Senate opponent of such deals said yesterday.

The switch in policy appears for now to end Pentagon plans to buy an additional 15 Russian Mi-17 helicopters for $345 million, sources familiar with the matter said.

“I applaud the Defense Department’s decision to finally cancel its plan to buy additional helicopters from Rosoboronexport,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a statement.

“Doing business with the supplier of these helicopters has been a morally bankrupt policy, and as a nation, we should no longer be subsidizing Assad’s war crimes,” Cornyn said.

Defense Department spokeswoman Maureen Schumann said in an email: “After initially requesting funds from Congress in the (2014 fiscal-year) budget to provide additional enhancements for the Afghan National Security Forces, the department has re-evaluated requirements in consultation with Congress.”

The Pentagon had planned to buy 63 new Mi-17s from Rosoboronexport for nearly $1.1 billion, defense officials told Congress in August. It is unclear how many of those 63 have been delivered.

Pentagon officials had previously defended the deals with Rosoboronexport as the fastest way to outfit the Afghan air force before most U.S. troops leave the country by the end of 2014.

But the Pentagon’s relationship with the company and other foreign contractors involved in the program has faced bipartisan criticism in Congress. Critics cited Rosoboronexport’s deals with Syria, the helicopters’ escalating costs and federal investigations involving the Russian helicopter project.

Reuters reported in August that the Defense Criminal Investigative Service had begun investigating the Huntsville, Ala., Army unit that oversees the Mi-17 program, and ties between the unit’s former chief and two foreign subcontractors.